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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22451824">Unspoken</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/homeric/pseuds/homeric'>homeric</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Firefly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:34:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>658</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22451824</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/homeric/pseuds/homeric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jayne knows, River knows.  Just because neither of them say it doesn't stop it being real.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jayne Cobb/River Tam</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Disclaimer: River and Jayne aren't mine.</p><p>Written as a short challenge fic.</p><p>Jayne</p><p>I aint one for fancy talk.</p><p>Or talk at all as a matter of fact. So it's kind of nice that she don't speak to me. Not out loud anyways. That whacked out moon brain of hers probably shuffles through my thoughts easy as she deals out a poker hand though - and the girl can play.</p><p>She just floats on in all confident like when I aint expecting her, those pretty brown eyes innocent and knowing, and helps herself to what she fancies.</p><p>My guns.</p><p>What's left of what I'm drinking.</p><p>Me.</p><p>Started after Miranda. Guess Simon had Kaylee and the Captain had 'Nara and Zoe aint the comforting kind. Made sense she'd come to me - weren't like there were any other options, and I'm not smart enough to ask her stuff she don't want to answer.</p><p>She can take apart and reassemble Vera faster than I can now, and to tell the truth that don't sit well. Like the two girls were conspiring or something. Both all long, lean lines and pretty to look at until you bring them into play.</p><p>We did that the first couple of weeks. Stripping down the guns and putting them back together. I think she liked the routine and fixing all the parts back together. She did it graceful like. Those pretty little fingers dancing over the steel and putting the guns back all neat and tidy.</p><p>Don't matter what Mal or her brother says - I never laid a hand on her before she asked me to.</p><p>It was her that came to me.</p><p>Now I'm the one stripping her, and I like to think I'm putting her back together when slips into my bunk at night. The Doc can't put her brain back together, but I reckon there's something she needs more, and in the dark she's just a woman next to her man.</p><p>But she's gone in the morning and she never says a word.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>River</p>
<p>I don't speak to him.</p>
<p>Sometimes he speaks to me, but "yes" and "no" can be conveyed by a shake of my head and all the words are like puzzles waiting to be put together and they never fit right so I leave them out there to be picked up later.</p>
<p>There are fourteen inches of steel between us and the black. The air recycler hinges upon a computer chip smaller than my thumbnail. Serenity has to want to fly, and sometimes after… I don't know the words for that - let them sit all pretty in the chaos. I've already seen too much.</p>
<p>Little tiny things keeping little tiny people alive in the black, and all with different colors.</p>
<p>Simon and Kaylee are pink and green like new leaves, Mal and Inara are red and gold. Zoe is purple like the queens in the history books, and Jayne is brown.</p>
<p>He changes but not really, not like the others.</p>
<p>When he is angry he is black brown like a barren planet, hard and unyielding.</p>
<p>When I kiss him he is the warm umber of soil hot from the sun, open and willing.</p>
<p>His heartbeat is strong and always makes sense. Sixty two beats per minute when he's sleeping, seventy four when I undress and make him wait before I let him touch me.</p>
<p>He knows what he is, and when I am with him I know what I am too.</p>
<p>I am River.</p>
<p>I am his.</p>
<p>Don't need words to tell the 'verse what it already knows. Dress everything up pretty with rules and convention and polite da bian hua. I don't want that and he doesn't either.</p>
<p>Strip it all away in the dark and I see him and he sees me.</p>
<p>Besides, not like any one would dare complain. Vera approves, and she and I have an understanding when it comes to those who would threaten our man</p>
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